Etsy Shuts Down French Marketplace

After major layoffs and a change in leadership, Etsy continues to slash costs. The latest victim: French marketplace ALittleMarket.com, which Etsy had acquired in 2014. Etsy will also close ALittleMercerie.com.

The iTunes app for ALitleMarket.com was updated as recently as March, but now visitors to the website are greeted with the news that the site is closing.

It’s not clear what will happen to employees, but the Etsy France team will eventually take over as sellers migrate to the Etsy platform.

Roughly translated via Google Translate: “This will result in the closing of the alittlemarket.com and alittlemercerie.com websites and the transfer of your shops to the Etsy.com platform (if you wish of course). The Fine Team will do everything possible to ensure that the transfer of your shops takes place in the best conditions. Then, the Etsy France team will take over to help you make the most of the potential of the platform.”

At the time of the acquisition, then CEO Chad Dickerson called the move “strategic and complementary” and said A Little Market would remain independent led by founders Nicolas Cohen, Nicolas d’Audiffret, and Loic Duvernay.

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Etsy is making available a tool to allow ALitttleMarket sellers to migrate listings to a new shop on Etsy – however, it won’t be available to sellers until July 10th.

It appears sellers will be able to migrate only certain elements of their listings using the tool. A French-language chart included in the announcement shows sellers will be able to transfer elements such as photos, categories, titles, and descriptions, while it appears sold-price, reviews, shop names and avatars may not be able to be transferred automatically.

Sellers began feeling the effect of the announcement on Monday, and on Friday, it will shut its social media accounts. On August 1st, it will remove a shipping feature. As of September 1st, buyers will no longer be able to make purchases, and the site shut down altogether at the end of September.

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.